Over time an ever expanding list of communication channels have appeared for person-to-person communications. Early technologies, such as telephony, have led to new communication technologies such as the World Wide Web, wireless technologies, electronic mail, newsgroups, chat, instant messaging, and file sharing applications. These different forms of communication, which may be referred to as “collaborative applications,” allow groups of two or more users to share information, ideas, and/or data in a collaborative way.
Collaborative applications have gained in popularity in corporate and non-profit organizations, online communities, and social networks since they facilitate communication and information exchange. As organizations grow, the popularity of collaborative applications makes it difficult for users to oversee the large number of collaborative events occurring at any given time. This in turn makes it difficult for users to identify which collaborations may be of interest.
Each collaboration deals with a particular subject, which can be referred to as a common social context. The concept of a common social context attempts to describe a wide variety of social interactions that may bring a group of two or more people together to communicate in a non-random fashion. Common social contexts relate to the subject matter shared within some collaborative interaction rather than the collaborative application used to facilitate the collaboration. For example, common social contexts can include the sports discussed in a chat room, the product information within a document shared at a business meeting, and/or the personal relationship information exchanged between two people in a series of electronic mails. As can be seen, common social contexts relate to the subject matter or theme contained in a collaborative interaction, not the mechanism for the collaboration.